Yehudi Menuhin - The Great EMI Recordings [51CD Box Set] (2009)

Given Yehudi Menuhin’s near-iconic status, it would seem appropriate for EMI to bring out a complete edition of his violin recordings, similar to the label’s successful comprehensive Callas and Karajan sets. Until that happens, consider acquiring this 50-CD compilation that covers about 70 percent of Menuhin’s output as soloist, chamber collaborator, and concerto player in an impressively wide repertoire range. Naturally collectors will kvetch over this or that omission, such as Menuhin’s Beethoven concerto with Klemperer, his LP-era unaccompanied Bach traversals, his Delius sonatas with Eric Fenby, or the earliest and finest of his Bruch G minor concerto traversals. Or, for that matter, why include Menuhin’s jazz duets with Stéphane Grappelli but not his West Meets East encounters with Ravi Shankar? Yet if you calculate this package’s cost per disc based on a $68.98 list price, even without a discount you’ve got the best Menuhin bargain in town.

That said, unevenness was Menuhin’s middle name. Compare, for example, the violinist’s fluent, colorful pioneering recording of the solo sonata Bartók wrote for him with his disturbingly parched LP-era remake. Menuhin’s relatively pale tone in the Beethoven sonatas with Louis Kentner and the Furtwängler-led Beethoven concerto radically differs from the more robust fiddling he served up when remaking the concerto in Vienna with Silvestri.

At the same time, some of Menuhin’s later efforts find him on top form (the Brahms Double Concerto with Paul Tortelier), while Paganini’s difficult Second concerto lacks nothing in surface charm and scintillation. The Walton concerto and Berlioz’s Harold in Italy also represent Menuhin’s underrated accomplishments as a violist. Look no further than the Elgar concerto with the composer conducting, the Enescu Third sonata, Bazzini’s finger-twisting La Ronde des lutins, or the Bach sonatas and partitas to understand why the best recordings from Menuhin’s teen years still withstand time’s unforgiving test. A bonus documentary disc features Menuhin in his own words interspersed with musical examples; it’s about as compelling and insightful as a late-night TV infomercial. In all, self-recommending to Menuhin acolytes.